Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics

vLex
Publisher:
Wiley
Publication date:
2021-02-01
ISBN:
0305-9049

Issue Number

Latest documents

  • Demographics and Emissions: The Life Cycle of Consumption Carbon Intensity

    The consumption carbon intensity – defined as the carbon emissions per unit of consumption – varies with age: it is hump‐shaped over the life cycle, but becomes flatter at high levels of income. We document this novel fact using US household‐level consumption data. This relationship holds not only at the individual level, but also at the aggregate: we leverage information across US states and countries all around the world to show that the carbon intensity of the economy depends on the population age structure. Consequently, policy changes that alter carbon prices affect relatively more middle‐age individuals, and especially so in low‐income economies.

  • The Euro Area Government Spending Multiplier in Demand‐ and Supply‐Driven Recessions

    We estimate government spending multipliers in demand‐ and supply‐driven recessions for the Euro Area. Multipliers in a moderately demand‐driven recession are two to three times larger than in a moderately supply‐driven recession, with the difference between multipliers being non‐zero with very high probability. More generally, multipliers are inversely correlated with the deviation of inflation from its trend, implying that the more demand‐driven a recession, the higher the multiplier. Multipliers range from −$$ - $$0.5 in supply‐driven recessions to about 2 in demand‐driven recessions. The econometric approach leverages a factor‐augmented interacted vector‐autoregression model purified of expectations (FAIPVAR‐X). The model captures the time‐varying state of the business‐cycle including strongly and moderately demand‐ and supply‐driven recessions, by taking the whole distribution of inflation deviations from trend into account.

  • Chinese Import Competition and Prices: Evidence from India*

    How do output prices respond to trade shocks? Using detailed firm‐product level data on sales and quantity between 1996 and 2007, we study the causal effect of Chinese import competition on prices for Indian manufacturing firms. We find that Chinese import competition induces a significant decline in firm‐product prices. A 1 percentage point increase in the Chinese import penetration ratio reduces firm‐product prices by 3.5%. Further, this decline in prices is driven by a decline in markup, conditional on costs, as opposed to the pass through of cost savings to prices – providing evidence for pro‐competitive effect. This decline in prices and markup is less pronounced for firms owned by Business Groups compared to stand‐alone, privately owned firms. We also document a large decrease in marginal costs and an increase in markup with no significant effect on prices for firms on account of increased access to imported Chinese inputs.

  • Changes in Inflation Dynamics in Korea: Global Factor, Country Factor and Their Propagation*

    This study examines the influence of global and country factors on inflation movements in Korea using a multi‐level factor model. Our results indicate that country factors showed a more pronounced alignment with inflation in Korea up to the mid‐2000s, having particularly strong impacts around the Asian financial crisis. Beyond the mid‐2000s, global factors played a more influential role in shaping inflation. This increased influence of global factors on inflation became particularly apparent during the notable inflationary surge following the COVID‐19 pandemic. We construct structural models to identify global and country shocks and find that the effect of global shocks persists for a longer period, whereas the immediate impact of country shocks is more pronounced. Global shocks have a greater influence on producer price index and import price index inflation compared to consumer price index (CPI) or core CPI inflation. We further find that energy prices closely correlate with global factors, while exchange rates are highly correlated with country factors in Korea.

  • Issue Information
  • The Impact of Firm Technology on Carbon Disclosure: The Critical Role of Stakeholder Pressure

    The demand for transparency about the microeconomic sources of environmental pollution has surged recently, causing carbon disclosure to rise to the top of the global climate change discourse. In this study, we empirically investigate how the environmental performance of firm production technologies shapes their voluntary carbon disclosure behaviour and how key stakeholders influence the performance‐disclosure relationship. Using a panel of 1,547 firms across 24 countries covering 2006–20, we find that firms with the most efficient technologies for reducing emissions tend to disclose their carbon impact, especially when they face more stringent environmental regulations. These high‐performing firms demonstrate a tendency for non‐disclosure when faced with intense shareholder and environmental activist pushback against pollution. Our findings also highlight the existence of a profitability penalty for transparent high‐efficiency firms relative to comparable firms that adopt strategic silence.

  • A Kick for the GDP: The Effect of Winning the FIFA World Cup

    This paper uses OECD data to examine whether winning the men's FIFA World Cup boosts GDP growth, as claimed by analysts and media outlets concomitantly with every edition of this football competition. By implementing both an event‐study design and a synthetic difference‐in‐difference strategy, the analysis shows that winning the World Cup increases year‐over‐year GDP growth by at least 0.48 percentage points in the two subsequent quarters. This result seems primarily driven by enhanced export growth, which is consistent with a greater appeal enjoyed by national products and services on the global market after victory in a major sporting event.

  • Should Developed Economies Manage International Capital Flows? An Empirical and Welfare Analysis*

    The literature on the effects of country risk premium shocks has largely focused on emerging market economies. We empirically show that in developed economies, risk premium shocks explain a non‐trivial share of aggregate fluctuations and are key drivers of real activity during crises. Our empirical results and results from a two‐country New Keynesian model indicate that an increase in the risk premium leads to a reduction in aggregate output under monetary union, but not so in countries with flexible exchange rates and independent monetary policy. Model simulations suggest that managing international capital flows enhances welfare in countries under monetary union.

  • How Large is the Sovereign Greenium?*

    This paper assembles a comprehensive sovereign green bond database and estimates the sovereign greenium. The development of green bond markets has been one of the most important financial breakthroughs in the domain of sustainable finance during the last 15 years. A central pecuniary benefit for green bond issuers has been that these bonds exhibit a positive green premium (greenium), that is, a lower yield relative to a similar conventional bond. Yet, issuances at the sovereign level have been relatively recent and not well documented in the literature. We find that green bonds are issued at a relatively small premium (4 basis points on average) in Advanced Economies. Yet, importantly, the greenium is growing over time and is considerably larger (11 basis points on average) for Emerging Market Economies.

  • Brexit: Trade Diversion due to Trade Policy Uncertainty

    The paper quantifies how much of the reduction in Spanish trade flows with the UK after the 2016 Brexit referendum was diverted to other markets. To obtain reliable estimates of trade diversion we regress firm‐level changes in flows with all markets except the UK on changes in flows with the UK. In order to solve the positive correlation of trade flows between different markets we use the Brexit referendum as part of our instrumental variable. We then treat firms as units subjected to differential uncertainty shocks according to their initial patterns of sector and trade specialization. In particular, the referendum date is interacted with potential sectoral tariffs and pre‐referendum firm‐level exposure to the UK. The paper shows a close to full trade diversion for exports, mostly to other European countries, for those firms more exposed to that particular market (above 10%) and a heterogeneous response on the part of Spanish firms with low exposure (below 10%). Trade diversion for imports is weaker but the results are less robust. Given a particular share of exposure to the UK market, trade diversion appears to be more limited for big companies in comparison to small companies.

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